(EOZ) UNRWA published a booklet talking about how your sizable donations to that agency can help “Palestine refugees.”

Here is one of their suggestions:

$318,000 rehabilitates one school and provide its students with a safe learning environment

UNRWA aims to ensure that education services meet national and international standards and provide Palestine refugee children with a safe learning environment. The rehabilitation of schools premises, built in the 1960’s, is a top priority for UNRWA in Jordan.

Current safety hazards are weakened structures due to dilapidated columns, risk of falling debris, loose plaster in the ceiling, decaying lintels and seismic risk from earthquakes. An additional risk is the sexual harassment and abuse of both male and female children in school toilets, because of their location outside the main building.

Changes to infrastructure include the relocation of toilets inside school buildings and extension of the height of the boundary walls.

UNRWA schools in Jordan need to be better protected from…Jordanians? Jordanians who like to sexually abuse little Palestinian boys and girls?

Why isn’t UNRWA complaining loudly about this outrage? Why aren’t they insisting that these children be protected by Jordanian authorities? Practically all of Palestinian Arab “refugees” in Jordan have held Jordanian citizenship since 1950, how can such abuse be buried? No doubt the schools need better security, but how come UNRWA isn’t publicly insisting that Jordan protect her own citizens? (WHY?)

The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Filippo Grandi, expressed his grave concern about the current medical and health conditions of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli prisons.The Commissioner-General appealed to the Israeli government to find an acceptable solution, noting that the hunger strikers’ demands are generally related to the basic rights of prisoners, as stipulated in the Geneva Conventions.Filippo Grandi reiterated the call of the Secretary-General of the United Nations that those under administrative detention be brought to trial or be set free, noting that two of the administrative detainees are in serious condition after more than 74 days, and are in imminent danger of death.

Then the statement was taken down, and this replaced it:

The statement on prisoners on hunger strike has been removed because it contained some inaccuracies, which are being checked.

The Commissioner General of UNRWA, Filippo Grandi, is following with increasing concern the ongoing hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody, in particular, those held as administrative detainees. He echoes the calls of the Secretary General, Mr Ban Ki-moon, and Robert Serry, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, to reach a solution without delay.

The major difference, besides a softening of the rhetoric (“thousands of Palestinian political prisoners” changed to “Palestinian prisoners,” “grave concern” into “increasing concern”) is that UNRWA’s original statement implies – incorrectly – that Israel’s treatment of the prisoners does not adhere to the Geneva Conventions, and the updated statement no longer mentions Geneva. It also took out the part demanding that those under&nbsp;administrative&nbsp;detention be brought to trial or freed. (Of course, Western countries like the US and UK also use administrative detention.)It is interesting that UNRWA corrected its mistake/slander for once.(h/t MostlyKosher)

That’s completely astounding that the original post was published at all and then retracted. An international agency like UNRWA that should be supposedly unbiased should not of published the claims they made in the first place and there should be a brouhaha of some kind at the very least… but you know there won’t be.

(EOZ) This article is, hands down, the best attempt by anyone to nail down the facts about how many people lived in Palestine before 1948. The group that wrote this has no political agenda I could detect on either side – many articles on the site are clearly not pro-Israel.The major conclusions were:

1.The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times,

2.Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began.

3. Zionist settlement between 1880 and 1948 did not displace or dispossess Palestinians.

4. Historic population data in Palestine during Ottoman times and during Mandatory times show significant discrepancies.

5. It is not possible to estimate illegal Arab immigration directly, but apparently there was some immigration.

5. There are large discrepancies between official population figures and the number of Palestinian refugees

6. There are serious discrepancies in reporting of the number of refugees by UNRWA.

7. The city of Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since about 1896

I found this article while trying to find out the facts about land ownership before 1948. So many times, anti-Zionists point out that Jews only owned 6-8% of the land in Palestine, implying that Arabs owned 92-94%. I was wondering how much of the land was privately owned by Arabs, how much by the British (and Ottomans beforehand), and what other categories there were.Here is what I found out from this article:

Population and Land Ownership prior to the UN Partition Resolution

An Anglo-American commission of inquiry in 1945 and 1946 examined the status of Palestine. No official census figures were available, as no census had been conducted in Palestine in 1940, so all their surmises and figures are based on extrapolations and surmises. According to the report, at the end of 1946, About 1,220,000 Arabs and 608,000 Jews resided within the borders of Mandate Palestine. Jews had purchased 6 to 8 percent of the total land area of Palestine. This was about 20% of the land that could be settled and cultivated. About 46% of the land was registered in the tax registers to Arab villages, to Arabs living on the land, or absentee owners, and about the same amount was government land. However, most of this land was not privately owned. The Arabs of Palestine had received much of their land in leases conditional upon cultivation or used land that was part of village commons.

So based on this, it appears that Arabs privately owned somewhere between 1% and 22% of the land in Palestine before 1948, depending on the meaning of the word “most” in the sentence above. The other “Arab” land was not owned by them, but was leased conditionally from the British.In other worlds, it is even possible that Jews owned more land than Arabs did before the 1948 war!This discounts the fact that the British tried very hard to stop Jews from buying and privatizing land – if it wasn’t for that, Jews would undoubtably have come to privately own much more. Even so, it is an illuminating fact amongst the rhetoric.

(zum.de) Ottoman Syria consisted of the Vilayets (provinces) of Syria (Damascus) and Beirut inclusively the Mutasarrifats ofBeirut and Jerusalem; one might also include the Vilayets of Aleppo and Deir ez Zor, as they covered considerable parts of the territory of modern Syria. Ottoman Syria (the Vilayets of Syria and Beirut, Mutasarrifats of Beirut andJerusalem) covered the territory of modern Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and much of modern Jordanand Syria; if the Vilayets of Aleppo and Deir ez Zor are included, all of modern Syria as well as territory within modern Turkey and modern Iraq. In 1917 Ottoman Syria came under the occupation of British and French troops; in 1920/1922 it was partitioned intothe French Mandates of Lebanon and Syria and the British Mandates of Palestine and Transjordan.

scratching my head… because I’d accepted those numbers before.Is there anything about Palestine that isn’t a lie?

On the eve of World Refugee Day, Zthe Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released some interesting numbers.From Wafa:

According to UNRWA records, registered Palestinianrefugees totaled 4.8 millionin 2010: 41.6% in Jordan, 23.2% in the Gaza Strip, 16.4% in the West Bank,9.9% in Syria and 8.9% in Lebanon.In the Palestinian Territory,refugees represent 43.4% of the total population in 2011, with 29.7% of them in the West Bank and 67.3% in the Gaza Strip.

The vast majority of “refugees” living in Jordan have had Jordanian citizenship since 1950, meaning that they cannot be considered refugees in any sense of the word – except for UNRWA’s tortured definition.But even more bizarre is the characterization of “Palestinian refugees” living in…Palestine! How can people be considered refugees if they live in their own purported country? The most they can claim to be are “displaced persons” which is a completely different thing.If you add together the Jordanian “refugees” with citizenship and the Palestinian “refugees” who also are citizens of the Palestinian Authority, you see that about 80% of all so-called “Palestinian refugees” are nothing of the sort. You cannot be a citizen of a country and a refugee at the same time. If UNRWA and the Palestinian Arab leadership and Jordan were interested in solving the so-called refugee problem, they would acknowledge these simple facts and work to mainstream those who still live in camps and depend on UNRWA services into their respective Jordanian and Palestinian Arab societies. Their refusal to do so shows, more than anything else, that the “refugee” problem is an artificial construct, a fake issue that is being exacerbated and prolonged by the very people who pretend that it is their primary concern.The facts are clear. 80% of the so-called refugees, aren’t. And the only reason they are still called refugees is to use them – some four million people, if you believe UNRWA’s numbers – as pawns to help destroy the Jewish state.If the US and EU truly want to see peace in the region, this issue must be dealt with head-on. The truth must be exposed, and these “refugees” must be properly categorized and their issues solved within the context of Jordan and the PA. Otherwise, all the calls for negotiations and Israeli concessions are a large shell game to conceal the truth of how the Arabs (and the UN) have been cynically using millions of people as political pawns. via elderofziyon.blogspot.com and Fried Kool-Aid via blogs.laweekly.comwe’ve been arguing with a stat that didn’t exist

for confirmation of the fact that conditions are better in Gaza, we don’t need to go further than a statement by John Ging, made in December, shortly before he left his position as coordinator of UNRWA operations in Gaza.

[W]e’ve now turned the corner[.] … [S]ince the new Israeli government decision on adjusting the blockade [that is, allowing more goods in via the land crossings], every day is better than yesterday.

“UNRWA should implement the curriculum of the host countries,” said Ziad Thabet, Deputy Minister of Education for the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. “We will prevent UNRWA from implementing any new curriculum without returning to the Ministry of Education.”

Fatah representatives and media outlets have also come out against any attempt to educate young Palestinians about the Nazi crimes.

Fatah activist Salah al-Wadiyeh urged Palestinian leaders to “confront this plan and to stand united against it.”

He said that teaching the Holocaust in Palestinian schools was a “Zionist plot aimed at brainwashing our children and instilling in them sympathy for their killers. They are trying to occupy our minds through this scheme.”

Al-Wadiyeh said that the “Palestinians know, more than any other people, the history of their enemies and their lies and endless false claims.”The Palestinians are opposed to teaching the Holocaust in their schools because first, many believe it never took place, and second, they are afraid that it some young men and women might identify with the Jews’ plight during World War II.

The Palestinians, like many other Arabs, have convinced themselves that the Holocaust is nothing but a “Zionist conspiracy” to justify the occupation of their lands.

I’d bet on UNRWA canceling the program and on the Obama administration and the Europeans continuing to fund the ‘Palestinian Authority’ anyway.